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| Southeast Asia |
| Eight dead as Philippine soldiers clash with Abu Sayyaf militants |
| 2019-02-03 |
| [AlAhram] Philippine troops killed three suspected Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... bully boyz and suffered five fatalities during a firefight on a remote southern island, the military said on Saturday. The clash with more than 100 members of the Abu Sayyaf group broke out in the town of Patikul in the Sulu province at 11:30 a.m. as troops pursued those behind a church attack on Sunday, Colonel Gerry Besana, front man for the military's Western Mindanao Command said. The church bombing in Sulu, which killed 22 people and maimed more than 100 including civilians and soldiers, was a suicide kaboom carried out by an Indonesian couple, with help of the Abu Sayyaf group, Interior Minister Eduardo Año said on Friday. Abu Sayyaf is a bully boy organization notorious for kidnappings and Lion of Islam factions and has pledged allegiance to Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... . Sulu province, in the country's Mindanao region, is a known stronghold of the group. The encounter in Patikul lasted nearly two hours, Besana said, with five soldiers and 15 bully boyz also maimed. Martial law has been in place in Mindanao since domestic and imported muscle dressed in black outfits overran Marawi City in 2017 and clung on through five months of air strikes and street battles reminiscent of scenes in Syria and Iraq. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |